My Welsh Grandparents - Thomas and Isabella
From the land of my fathers - Thomas and Isabella
For my final posts (at least for now!) from my trawl through my "Ancestry" family tree, I want to try and tie together the various family history threads together where they meet - with my grandparents. In this post, I look at my father's parents:
Thomas Powell becomes Tom Davies, then Thomas Powell Davies:
In an earlier post I showed how the historical records confirmed the family story of my father's father having been brought up by the Davies family as Tom Davies, then discovering that his real mother’s name was Mary Powell, so combining the two to make “Powell-Davies”.
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| My grandfather's birth certificate - no father's name given |
The 1881 Pontypridd census includes the 11 month old 'nursing child', listed then as "Thomas D Powell" born (on the St. Donat's estate) in Llantwit Major, but now being raised at 'Graigalfa' Road, Glyntaff, with Thomas Davies, 'general labourer and local minister', as the Head of the household.
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| The houses where my Welsh grandfather was brought up |
For the next two censuses, the family have moved a few hundred yards or so to Pentrebach Road - nearer to the Brown & Lenox chainworks where Thomas Davies now works as a foreman. The 1891 census is the only record I can find to use the phrase "adopted son" to describe Thomas Powell:
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| 1891 "Adopted son" Thomas Powell becomes 1901 "Student" Tom Davies |
By the 1901 census, my grandfather is simply listed as "Tom Davies" - but his profession is very different to the other sons in the family. While William and Ioan are also working at the chainworks, 20 year-old Tom is now a 'Student (Training College)'. Was this different pathway a decision of his adopted parents or, as I often wonder, was there some arrangement with the father's family (perhaps one of the wealthy Carnes of the St. Donat's estate) to support his upbringing? There's no way now of knowing, of course.
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| 1911: Thomas Powell Davies and Thomas Davies and their families |
Whatever the reason, by the 1911 census, my grandfather - now described as a "Powell Davies" for the first time (although without any hyphen) - is now a local 'schoolmaster', married and living just across the River Taff in Treforest. My father, Dillwyn, has just been born.
His parents are still living at Pentrebach Road and his brother Ioan (my Dad's 'Uncle Jack') is still employed at the chainworks and his sister Catherine/Katie is still a 'dressmaker'. His father, Thomas Davies is, however, now just listed as 'Baptist Minister' - a profession which he increasingly turned to, writing in Welsh under the pseudonym of 'Cyfaill John' - as described in the previous post. Interestingly, like the rest of his adopted family, my grandfather is also described as speaking "both" Welsh and English.
My Grandmother, Isabella, and her father, Thomas Thomas:
One of the old paper records that I still possess is the original 1902 certificate of marriage between my 22 year old grandparents, schoolmaster Tom Powell Davies and Maria Isabella Thomas, described as the daughter of 'merchant' Thomas Thomas. The witnesses are a 'George Morgan', Tom's sister Catherine, one of Isabella's sisters Ethel Mary and one of her brothers, William Aneurin:
The title of 'merchant' for Isabella's father - my great-grandfather - Thomas Thomas is perhaps a little grandiose. The later 1911 census lists him simply as a 'retired cooper' - and that had been his trade for his early years. Another of my old paper records is his indenture as an apprentice "in the art of a cooper" in the Borough of Carmarthen in 1853:
Isabella herself is described as an "Assistant School Mistress & Music Teacher", although she stopped teaching after her marriage. A newspaper report on the Golden Wedding of Isabella and Thomas adds that the couple were "born within eleven days of each other, brought up in the same town, (and) taught in the same school".
From what my Dad told me, Isabella was an excellent musician. A later 1940s newspaper article described her as being "accompanist of Pontypridd Mixed Choir, Treforest Male Voice Society and Rhondda Orchestra, besides acting as an organist at churches served by her husband". Another says that she was "well known in South Wales and Monmouthshire musical circles and at one time taught the Welsh composer, Morfydd Owen".
I still have an old book on my shelves, that I believe belonged to her, containing both music from Mendelssohn's 'Hymn of Praise' and some from the 1863 Eisteddfod on the 'Siege of Harlech', including a page translating music terms from Italian into Welsh:
Thomas and Isabella brought up four boys - the three listed in the 1911 census above, Mervyn and Glynne, and my father, Dillwyn and the youngest son, Noel, born in 1914.
As a young man, Uncle Mervyn joined the Communist Party (I still have copies of some of his old books on my shelves, although I didn't keep the Stalin!) but was later a Labour Party Constituency Secretary in Cardiff. He was also a teacher and became a leading official in the National Union of Teachers. As a young boy, I remember staying with Mervyn and his wife, my Auntie Gwyneth, in Rhiwbina, Cardiff, and being fascinated by his stamp collections, the goldfish in his pond, and that he kept bees and made mead.
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| Part of Mervyn's NUT personnel file and a 1958 letter from his mother to Glynne |
Uncle Glynne was a bank worker. However, even as a small boy, he struck me as someone who was struggling with life. I know he took some solace in watching cricket, eventually living in Cathedral Road, Cardiff, just a short walk from Glamorgan's Sophia Gardens Cricket Ground. I remember helping my father to clear his house after his death in 1982. His wallet contained two old letters from his mother, on one of which she had written in the corner "P.S. Relax and relax and take things easy".
Uncle Noel, father of my Tasmanian cousin James, emigrated to Australia with his family in the 1960s, so I only remember meeting him when he returned to visit my parents on a visit to England. He was a Lieutenant in the Army Air Corps in Italy during World War Two, which, despite my Dad's humour in his letter to him, his family must have known put him in danger. As it happens, Noel did get 'blown up' but lived on until 2003, if, as James told me, with a somewhat misshapen skull.
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| A letter to Noel - and about Noel - during WW2 |
The Reverend Thomas Powell-Davies:
While my grandfather's father had been a Baptist Minister, my grandfather became an Anglican one. This portrait of him always used to hang from the bookcase at the bottom of our stairs when I was a boy:
A 1932 Clerical Directory, traced by my cousin James, shows that he left teaching to become a curate in Glyntaff in 1917, moved to work at St.Woolos in Newport in 1919, before then becoming vicar of St.Hilda's in Griffithstown, Newport:
The record for the 1928 wedding of Catherine Davies - my Dad's "Auntie Katie" - shows that my grandfather was the vicar at the wedding. He is also in the family wedding photo, together with my grandmother Isabella, his sons Dillwyn and Noel, and his adopted father and brother, Thomas Davies and 'Uncle Jack':
Thomas and Isabella - "a really good Welsh pair"
There are plenty of old shots in the family album of my grandparents - such as the one below of a 1930 holiday in Margate - as well as newspaper cuttings commemorating my grandfather's '21 years as Vicar of Griffithstown' and the couple's 1952 Golden Wedding.
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| Thomas and Isabella, Margate 1930 |
There are further newspaper cuttings marking my grandfather's death in 1953. A later letter in the Argus from 1984 also recalls how "The Rev T. Powell Davies and his organist wife really made us all sing. They were a really good Welsh pair".
After her husband's death, I understand that Isabella first lived with Mervyn, and then with my father near Maidstone, Kent, where he was living and teaching, until she died in 1960. They are both buried in Glyntaff Cemetery, along with their infant son, Illtyd, who was born in 1909 but only lived for eight months:
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| My grandparents' grave in Glyntaff cemetery |
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